A Camera Was Lowered Into the USS Arizona — Over 900 Crew Members Are Still Down There

In November 2016, a remotely operated vehicle was threaded through an open hatch in the hull of the USS Arizona — a battleship that has sat at the bottom of Pearl Harbor since December 7, 1941. What the team found inside, including a Navy officer's uniform still hanging undisturbed on its hanger after 75 years, raised a question no one had fully confronted: what else is down there? More than 900 sailors and Marines remain entombed in the wreck. The Navy formally designated it an underwater military cemetery in 1942 and has never entered it with human divers since.

The 2016 expedition, conducted by the National Park Service and National Geographic using a custom-built ROV called the Eleventh Hour, was the first to document the interior in decades — and the low-oxygen environment inside means the conditions are far more preserving than anyone expected.

This video covers the World War II attack on December 7, 1941, the catastrophic magazine explosion, why 900+ crew members were never recovered, the oxygen-preservation science, survivor Donald Stratton watching the live footage, Lauren Bruner's ashes placed inside the wreck, and the 2025 Navy operation to remove 150-ton concrete platforms.

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